'Liberate the Media, NOW!' Feminist Media Activism and the National Organization for Women

This paper assesses the origins, goals, strategies, and outcomes of NOW’s media activism. From the organization’s inception in 1966, NOW members identified mass media as a powerful force that shaped ideas and experiences of gender. Seeking to eradicate harmful gender stereotypes and win favorable representations of feminism in news and entertainment media, NOW members attempted to harness the regulatory power of the state as part of an ambitious program to create what they deemed “a feminist media environment.”

NOW’s position as the nation’s most prominent chapter-based feminist membership organization and the many professional women within its ranks made NOW activists especially capable of mobilizing viewers and gaining the ear of industry insiders, as well as lobbying government and coordinating legal challenges in a complex bid to transform media. Such activities exceed characterization as examples of a “liberal” feminist organization seeking “access,” that is, merely striving to open another sector of well-paid professional employment to middle-class women. Rather, NOW activists viewed women’s access to prominent positions in media as only one strategy vital in the larger battle to “Liberate the Media, NOW!” and saw the ability to wield power over cultural representations as fundamental to the project of transforming society.

NOW’s efforts in this field of activism overlapped with other issues of feminist concern, brought NOW members into alliance with many groups of feminists and other activists, and engaged ordinary people in critical dialogue about the mass-mediated ideas and images surrounding them.